And again, EA incompetency strikes again. What a fucking fail of a company!

As of 12:50am--50 minutes after Maxis announced the game was released on the US east coast--the game still isn't available for download in Origin. Hordes of pissed-off people, myself included, posting on Facebook. I'm about to go to bed, angry at having given EA my hard-earned money. Why.. why... why.. fucking why.. didn't they allow preloads?!! Really wish Steam would have been handling this.

4:45am. I'm up because I've to be up and early to on set. I check on Origin and the game is now available for download. Downloading...I see Origin sent the serial code email at 1:11am. It still makes me shake my head. I should be able to play when I come back home sometime today.

I think I'm holding off on this one... I liked the beta for what it was, but I just don't like the always on DRM for this particular title... This is the kind of game I'd load up on my laptop to mess around with on lunch or while driving places (as a passenger)... No stable Internet at either place.... Maybe if all the reviews are outstanding, but for now, I'm out...

Yeah, Origin is a huge turnoff, as is the EA connection and the threat of Sims-style expansion pack overdosing. I'm still super excited for my copy to arrive, though.

Do you hate Steam as well? It's the same damn thing. I don't understand the hatred. They both do their jobs. Steam has had problems with unlocking games as well. It's the reality of PC games these days.

Yeah, Origin is a huge turnoff, as is the EA connection and the threat of Sims-style expansion pack overdosing. I'm still super excited for my copy to arrive, though.

Do you hate Steam as well? It's the same damn thing. I don't understand the hatred. They both do their jobs. Steam has had problems with unlocking games as well. It's the reality of PC games these days.

I love Steam, which is why I hate that this is on Origin. I want all my games on Steam.

Yeah, Origin is a huge turnoff, as is the EA connection and the threat of Sims-style expansion pack overdosing. I'm still super excited for my copy to arrive, though.

Do you hate Steam as well? It's the same damn thing. I don't understand the hatred. They both do their jobs. Steam has had problems with unlocking games as well. It's the reality of PC games these days.

I've never had a single problem with Steam, and have purchased over 150 games through their service.

I've purchased three games through Origin, and have had major issues (login, connectivity, downloading, patching, etc.) with all three of them.

Do you hate Steam as well? It's the same damn thing. I don't understand the hatred. They both do their jobs. Steam has had problems with unlocking games as well. It's the reality of PC games these days.

I can tell you what the difference is for me. Origin, even though I have it checked to start up on boot up (which I don't even reboot very often), has a way of just disappearing and suddenly not be running. It's a poorly made application compared to Steam (which I never have any issues with) and I have finally gotten frustrated enough with it that I no longer want to bother with it.

It always seems to disappear when there is an update to it, I guess, but why not let me know the update is around and choose to install it when I want instead of quitting out of the app and having to have me notice it disappeared to know there was an update?

bought the retail version (couldn't pass up 20 bucks in Amazon credit). got it, installed it, patched up and started playing through that damned tutorial just fine. I wish they had made it skippable; thankfully it's short.

Logged

Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

This is just from playing the tutorial, approximately one hour of gameplay. The game looks very pretty. The Glassbox engine runs smoothly and makes everything look miniaturized. I didn't notice any stutter/frame-rate drop until I got to the 2nd city of the tutorial, Lucky Shores, which had a higher populations. My computer is running WinXP still w/ an AMD 5000+ chip and an Nvidia Geforce card which I updated a year ago. Settings were in medium. Guess I'll have to turn those down to have the game run more smoothly with higher populations.

Music is neato. Presentation is smooth and tutorial was easy to follow.

My brain is very sleep deprive though.. so I'm gonna get a couple of hours of sleep before starting on my own city from scratch. Lastly, I had no problem joining a server. North America East Coast 2 was available. Only two other servers were Busy.

Played about 2 hours by joining a public region in Oceanic server. Didn't get to try the region play because the other players are mostly inactive or maybe I just didn't know how to interact with them.

Can't offer any services to the "active" players because there is an abandoned city between my city and them.

Without the region play, this is just like a smaller Simcity 4 where you have to build everything that your city need. I think it'll be more fun if a bunch of us get together and split role so that we each start a city that focus on something that the other cities need.

What a piece of shit of a game. I'm just astounded as how awful this release has been. I can't claim a city online, nor can I play one solo off the net. The game crashed on me once.. and now it's prompting me to replay the tutorial.. Except, the tutorial won't even work. If I could actually cry, I would as to how frustrated I feel with EA and their catastrophic decisions. I'm going to bed again.. tremendously unsatisfied.

Things are looking up. Woke up this morning and the servers were up and not full. I was able to login, join the North America East Coast 1 server, skip the tutorial, and start a city in a region with two other players in it. Game ran smooth for an hour before the servers were down again.

When you can connect, and the game runs smooth, it's a pleasure. So far, my small city has a couple of hundred folks in it. Gonna keep playing and growing it.

and this is why i'm holding off... While the MP sounds interesting, I don't usually have time for that... and if i can't play my SP game when I want to, it's a no go... i don't always have a lot of time to play, so trying to play SP and finding out I can't because their server was down, would piss me off...Maybe if they get to 100% up time, I might reconsider, but I'm not sure even then... It's shame, because when it worked, I liked the beta.. just not enough to put up with the DRM.

We are working hard to resolve a problem that is at the heart of the issues which some players have reported. Namely: Trading not working consistently Unable to load/claim city errors Getting stuck in a loop in the tutorial

To that end we are currently rolling out a server update which we believe will improve performance considerably. This will involve restarts over the next 4-5 hours across all of our current severs. Minor player impact may occur, such as trading not working consistently and the region wall not working occasionally.

We appreciate your continued patience and support while this fix is being deployed.

Just played for a couple of hours. Got a nice city going up to 500 pop before servers were taken down again. I was in a region with a few other players, but there wasn't any interaction. Arkon and Wondepug, what server are you guys going to be playing in? I can start another city in your region later today. Username: prgmr.